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dailypuzzle

Ginger GM

Chess.com

June 09, 2014 20:27

Norway R6: Three-Way Tie For First as Topalov Beats Kramnik

The Norway Chess tournament is still wide open with three rounds to go. In Monday's sixth round Veselin Topalov defeated arch rival Vladimir Kramnik while the other four games ended in draws. Kramnik is now tied for first place with Fabiano Caruana and Magnus Carlsen, who drew with Simen Agdestein and Sergey Karjakin respectively.

Eight years after Toiletgate (the cheating allegations during the 2006 World Championship in Elista), Veselin Topalov and Vladimir Kramnik are still not shaking hands. That's all there is to say about it, actually. As Topalov put it: “People are only talking about the handshake but if you exclude that, the games are completely normal. And it's not really the biggest problem of the chess world.”

Besides, on Monday we were also reminded of the fact that life is too short for such silliness. It was the day when British comedian and actor Rik Mayall, star of The Young Ones and Bottom, died, aged 56. Enjoy the video below, and enjoy life! Let's do-oo-oo it!

Back in March, at the Candidates’ Tournament in Khanty-Mansiysk, Topalov defeated Kramnik as White, but lost the second game as Black. On Monday the Bulgarian was on top again.

In a 4.Nf3 Nimzo-Indian Topalov decided to avoid his opponent's preparation and played a safe bishop swap on f6. After the game the Bulgarian said that he had noticed that Kramnik had problems when he needed to think already in the opening.

And indeed, not only did the Russian spend 48 minutes on his next three moves, his choices were surprising: where the simple 10...exd5 would equalize (fine when leading the tournament!?) and 12...Qe7 would keep things solid, he decided to go for complications with an Exchange sacrifice.

Anish Giri had a theory: “Topalov plays very well when he's an Exchange down so probably [Kramnik] was hoping that he would play badly when he's an Exchange up.”

But that wasn't the case: Topalov played excellent moves which made clear that the sac was hardly correct, and forced resignation (between these two players a matter of “sign the score sheets and walk away” - Topalov) just after the time control.

The sixth round was played in the Aarbakke factory in Bryne. (“We deliver advanced turnkey solutions and parts to the oil & gas industry, focusing on subsea and downhole. Aarbakke covers the whole process from engineering to manufacturing, assembly and testing.”)

To the question whether he had won an important game, Topalov answered: “I looked at all the people working here and I thought: when it goes badly, maybe I should just apply for a job here!”

Topalov scores his first win, against Kramnik

Caruana moved back to (shared) first place by drawing his game (“I would have preferred doing that by winning”) with Agdestein from a horrible position out of the opening. What is that former professional football player doing to those top GMs??

An early queen sortie to b6 by Caruana was completely uncalled for, but the Italian only remembered Bc1-e3 after playing his queen. Objectively speaking it might have been better to put the queen back to d8 there, or the next move, but that would make one look pretty silly!

If only Agdestein had seen the maneuver Nd2-c4-a5 before playing c2-c4 (he saw it later), he might have won his very first game. Nigel Short described the position for Black as “stalemate”. In the game Caruana took the very practical decision to give an Exchange and his strong g7-bishop made the day. At the end Caruana was even a bit better, but Agdestein found good squares for his rooks.

The third leader after six rounds is Carlsen, who drew extremely quickly with Karjakin. In a Berlin Ending with 9.h3 (where 9.Nc3 has been the main line for more than a decade) the World Champion switched back to 9...Bd7, his choice against Anand in the Chennai match. In April in Shamkir he had lost to Caruana with 9...h6.

The players followed a game Dominguez-Navara from last year and then at move 18 Carlsen played a novelty that steers the game right to a draw.

Aronian and Giri got a standard IQP middlegame position that can be reached from many different move-orders - Chessbase calls theirs “Queen's Gambit Declined: Semi-Tarrasch with 5.cxd5”. As it turned out, Giri knew more about it than his opponent! “Anish tricked me in the opening by not playing what he so convincingly played against Magnus,” said Aronian, who had recovered from his loss against Carlsen by listening to some Bill Evans.

The ...Nc6-e7-g6 maneuver is still standard, but the strong ...Bf6-e7! came unexpected for the world's number two. “I don't know if I would have found it but I knew it,” said Giri. And then, after a tactic on move 23, it became clear that Aronian needed to fight for a draw which wasn't so difficult because there was no way for Giri to avoid an opposite-colored bishop ending.

The opening in Grischuk-Svidler, a Symmetrical English, was quite interesting when White came up with the energetic 11.b4!? - only played once in a correspondence game. Svidler's reaction looks decent, although White might have had an advantage somewhere.

@ raze
"Who said KRAMNIK has more understanding about chess?" World Champion Magnus Carlsen said! He said that when he was young Kramnik's book made the strongest impression on him of any other grandmaster in history. And Carlsen has memorized tens of thousands of grandmaster games. Also World # 2 Levon Aronian has spoken very highly about Kramnik's understanding of chess.

My translation: – It's very impressive how Kramnik rattles off different variations and so on, and it's not so easy to see through if you don't know the game properly yourself. But if you look a little deeper, it's often plain nonsense, says Carlsen.

Apart from having too much sex with his girlfriend, Carlsen also should stop drinking coffee! Jesus!
As the late but great Bobby Fischer said when tasting his first coffee, he said, it feels so good there must a downsize to it. And stopped drinking coffee.
Really, beats me what is wrong with Carlsen.
Either he's off form or... Oh, what the hell do I care anyway.

According to Evans, Bobby was 'initiated' into sex at the 1960 Buenos Aires tournament. This resulted in a disastrous tournament performance. After this, Bobby said it had to be chess or girls, it couldn't be both. So he gave up girls...

According to the late Dutch GM Donner, the other participants paid for a prostitute to initiate Bobby. I don't know that was in the Evans story; Donner was able to invent history as it should have been.

Yes but after he retired from chess he got involved with females again. At minimum he lived with one in the Philippines and married one in Japan. So he showed great self-control to wait until he was done with chess to deal with women.

"The Great Kramnik (actually, not so great) still has 3 friends ahead. One that helped him in london and 2 Russians. Anything can happen ..."

Still cherishing long-refuted conspiracy theories? We saw just a few weeks ago (during one tournament in Khanty-Mansiysk) how "real" that collusion and how fragile your "proof" are. What sort of evidence do you accept?

I am not impressed with the quality of play at all. Closeness of field does not make a great event or say anything about the quality of the contest. NASCAR races are often bunched up with lots of "beatin' n' bangin' " but the racing is nothing compared to formula 1.

If the Queen of England farts it still stinks. The games themselves have not been compelling and have been fraught with blunders and missed chances. The highlight game of this event was Topalov thrashing Kramnik and him storming off like a baby. Where is the killer instinct? Magnus has been a disappointment and has shown a terrible attitude in his home country. When the story is an aging GM making a series of draws then it is clear the event itself is struggling to find storylines. . Just not to my taste. Zurich was exciting, Tata Steel was exciting Gashimov was exciting. Capablanca Memorial was exciting. The damned US championship was exciting. This is dreck. The player need to do better as do the commentators. Get those two dried up drunks out of the commentary chair and bring in Sachdev and Trent.

"terrible attitude" - what do you mean? I have followed all the games and interviews and I can't imagine why, if you had done the same, you would say his attitude has been terrible.

"struggling to find storylines" - storylines are what the media use to attract interest. I personally would rather that the organisers of the tournament focused on inviting strong and interesting GMs (which they have) rather than being preoccupied with trying to artificially manufacture storylines. I follow the tournament for the chess, not the soap opera.

"dried up drunks" - totally slanderous garbage.

"not compelling [...or exciting] ...dreck" - I don't know if I totally follow the logic; what makes a game compelling/exciting? You mention "blunders and missed chances" - what is this, if not the excitement you are after? Generally chess games can be classified as either 'correctly played' draws ("boring", "draw death", etc.), or games "fraught with blunders and missed chances" ("not compelling, not exciting, dreck") - what is it that you want? Why do you follow chess? For the "storylines"? To complain on forums? I feel like it's just pointless negativity and that your energies could be better focused on something more productive or meaningful. Nobody is making you watch.

Sorry for Kramnik, losing the lead with such a game aginst the person he dislikes most among the players!

In the press conference Topalov shared his impression that Kramnik regularly gets into trouble, if he gets out of book too early and doesn't play in well known territory.

And he wondered why Kramnik did'nt just play it safe with black by taking back with the pawn on d5 with very good drawing chances.

Perhaps Kramnik unconsciously still wants to 'punish' Topalaov in each game, even with black, which of course is bound to backfire more often than work.

Not appearing at the press conference is another weak move which can only backfire - not in view of possible fines, but in view of punishing yourself by demonstrating missing standing. People who take their losses without hiding, like Aronian or Svidler, receive more respect for a reason.

Maybe you're right, but I think it's rather cruel to have the loser of a game coming to the press conference.
I think only the winner should be bound to come. In fact I think no player should have to attend a press conference (they could still come if they want to).

Has anyone ever play a chess tournament ?
You have just played a hard game with high stakes, you have fought for hours in a difficult position, and now you must go to a press conference and look at the guy who just beat you while he explains your poor moves ?

If you get money for it, if it's part of the deal when you entered the tournament, yes, you can expect that of a player - that's called professionalism. But I guess there is a separate deal with Kramnik and Topalov when an organizer wants them both in his tournament.

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